Jami Carlacio, Cornell University . . . . . . . . .Conference on College Composition and Communication, Louisville, KY March 17-20, 2010
As little as we know about the future for which we are preparing our students, it is clear that it will be a place that is governed by information. Accessing, processing, building with, and communicating that information is how we will all make our livings. ...Being literate in this future will certainly involve the ability to read, write, and do basic math. However, the concept of literacy in the 21st century will be far richer and more comprehensive than the 3 Rs of the one room school house, a legacy that still strongly influences today's education environment. - David Warlick The Project:We know that college students possess a number of literacies: they are avid text messagers, bloggers, and (post-2007) Twitterers; they socialize on, embed videos in, and share photos and links on their Facebook or MySpace pages; and they are experts at finding information (or so they believe) via Google. At the same time, we must ask to what extent do these abilities demonstrate critical literacies? How do we create curricula to engage students in what they know, with the information resources and communication tools that they commonly use, and translate these skills into critical abilities for exploring, interpreting, and participating in our increasingly complex and globalized community? How do we teach students to use and to cite information properly and ethically when materials are so easy to download and often don‘t appear to be proprietary? How do we teach digital literacy digitally?
Lance Heidig, a reference and instruction librarian, and I co-taught Writing 142: Writing in the 21st Century in spring 2008, adopting a hybrid approach to literacy. Our goal was to teach students that literacies are as rich and as varied as their imaginations. We focused on alphabetic, information, and digital literacies and tried to demonstrate how these are all interconnected and interdependent.
Links to assignments:
1) Traditional Literacy Narrative.pdf -- to get students familiar with the genre of the literacy narrative. (Samples are available on 142 class wiki.)
2) A digital literacy narrative.pdf - an essay on what digital literacy meant to students (they had a lot of latitude with this!) and then a complementary visual story to accompany what they wrote about in #2. The object here was to get students to think imagistically and sonically as much as possible. We had them "storyboard" their ideas and then to assemble their images and choose (creative commons-licensed) music to accompany it; they were not allow to include voice-over narration.(See below for how one student characterizes the "Google generation of researchers.)
3) Final Project.pdf in four parts:a proposal to frame it, an annotated bibliography, a white paper, and the second and more complex digital story.pdf that combined images, sound, voice. (See below for an example of a student's project on democracy and the Internet in China.)
Link to our Library page | Link to Rubric.pdf | Link to student feedback.pdf | Our co-written article about the course is forthcoming in Dancing with Digital Natives: Staying in Step with the Generation that is Transforming the Way Business is Done. Ed. Heidi Gautschi and Michelle Manafy. Medford, NJ: CyberAge Books.
As little as we know about the future for which we are preparing our students, it is clear that it will be a place that is governed by information. Accessing, processing, building with, and communicating that information is how we will all make our livings. ... Being literate in this future will certainly involve the ability to read, write, and do basic math. However, the concept of literacy in the 21st century will be far richer and more comprehensive than the 3 Rs of the one room school house, a legacy that still strongly influences today's education environment. - David Warlick
The Project:We know that college students possess a number of literacies: they are avid text messagers, bloggers, and (post-2007) Twitterers; they socialize on, embed videos in, and share photos and links on their Facebook or MySpace pages; and they are experts at finding information (or so they believe) via Google. At the same time, we must ask to what extent do these abilities demonstrate critical literacies? How do we create curricula to engage students in what they know, with the information resources and communication tools that they commonly use, and translate these skills into critical abilities for exploring, interpreting, and participating in our increasingly complex and globalized community? How do we teach students to use and to cite information properly and ethically when materials are so easy to download and often don‘t appear to be proprietary? How do we teach digital literacy digitally?
Lance Heidig, a reference and instruction librarian, and I co-taught Writing 142: Writing in the 21st Century in spring 2008, adopting a hybrid approach to literacy. Our goal was to teach students that literacies are as rich and as varied as their imaginations. We focused on alphabetic, information, and digital literacies and tried to demonstrate how these are all interconnected and interdependent.
1) Traditional Literacy Narrative.pdf -- to get students familiar with the genre of the literacy narrative. (Samples are available on 142 class wiki.)
2) A digital literacy narrative.pdf - an essay on what digital literacy meant to students (they had a lot of latitude with this!) and then a complementary visual story to accompany what they wrote about in #2. The object here was to get students to think imagistically and sonically as much as possible. We had them "storyboard" their ideas and then to assemble their images and choose (creative commons-licensed) music to accompany it; they were not allow to include voice-over narration.(See below for how one student characterizes the "Google generation of researchers.)
3) Final Project.pdf in four parts:a proposal to frame it, an annotated bibliography, a white paper, and the second and more complex digital story.pdf that combined images, sound, voice. (See below for an example of a student's project on democracy and the Internet in China.)
Link to our Library page | Link to Rubric.pdf | Link to student feedback.pdf | Our co-written article about the course is forthcoming in
Dancing with Digital Natives: Staying in Step with the Generation that is Transforming the Way Business is Done. Ed. Heidi Gautschi and Michelle Manafy. Medford, NJ: CyberAge Books.